Vaccination Against Death

If this becomes possible, people will start living longer and longer. It won’t be a social security nightmare, with a huge population of senile, frail oldsters living off of the taxes of a small number of young workers. These long-lived people will probably be rich, since they’ll be more easily able to afford the drug regimens. And they won’t have to retire, though they may choose to. What they will be is consumers — rich, idle, populous, and eternal. Economies will adjust over decades and centuries to give these consumers what they want. (And what will they want? Travel, adventure, luxury. Buy stocks in cruise lines now.)

But they won’t just consume. Some of them will produce amazing things. Imagine Albert Einstein, or Tolkien, or Steve Jobs, or da Vinci, or some of our other geniuses, immortal. And there will be more of them: long, long life will give many people the chance to develop their minds and arts to amazing degrees. For someone born 100 years from now, it may simply be impossible to reach the top of your profession, since so many other geniuses have a head start. (There will still be work for young people. There is always work to do.

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Whether they’ll be paid well is another matter…)

This will create a huge disparity in lifestyle between the rich and poor for a while. But if the death vaccine is like other vaccines, then in a relatively short time, the drug regimen will become more and more inexpensive and widely available, until almost everyone can live forever if they wish.

Then what? Most people imagine disaster: overpopulation, which leads to disease, starvation, war. This is what often happens, among humans and other animals, when there is overpopulation. We will mismanage our resources, and pollute and overburden the Earth. Then civilization will collapse, the secret of immortality will be lost, and we’ll return to the Stone Age.